According to a comprehensive new study, global warming has already bled the frigid continent, which is larger than Europe, of about 2.7 trillion tons of ice. This enormous amount of ice has already raised global sea levels by as much as a centimeter.
This outflow seems to be increasing: Almost half of all losses have occurred in just the last five years. And the continent is hemorrhaging that mass in a way that will lead to especially high sea levels on the East Coast of the United States.
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The results, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, present what is generally considered to be highest-quality census of the world’s glaciers and ice sheets. Written by 84 scientists across 44 different institutions, including nasa and the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the paper combines several different modes of measurement to produce one consensus result.
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...For years, researchers have generally believed that the eastern two-thirds of Antarctica—dubbed “East Antarctica”—have been growing in mass. As the climate changed, snowfall had seemed to increase there, and the region seemed to be absorbing more sea level rise than it was contributing.
